In this letter, Franken mentions that one of the American recruits who went to fight for the IS in Syria was from Minnesota. In fact there have now been at least two Minnesota men who were recruited for IS and proceeded to travel to Syria to fight and die for Jihad.

The most recent case was that of Abdirahmaan Muhumed, aka Abdifatah Ahmed. Guess where this IS recruit worked? Our airport.

Mr. Muhumed, or Mr. Ahmed as he called himself, worked as both a fueler and a cleaner of planes starting in November of 2001. That means that just two months after 9/11/01, when our nation should have been most diligently aware of Islamic militants amongst us, our airport went ahead and hired this man.

The sad irony here is that TSA officers who have only a minor security clearance go through rigorous background checks, while apparently our country gives virtually unlimited security passes to people who cannot verify their identity or their backgrounds. One of the reasons for this is Minnesotans’ bend-over-backwards politically correct stance toward Somalia and its refugees.

We all can agree that war-torn Somalia is not a happy place to live, but our response as Americans was to say that any and all Somalians could come and stay in our country without having to follow any of the basic rules that we would expect of other legal immigrants. The United States considers Somalia a “Rogue Government,” and has for many years. Because of this, we do not even attempt to validate identities or check backgrounds of people who hail from there because we understand that the government is so corrupt that the information would not be valid anyway.

Even if you believe that everyone who lives in a violent country should be able to come to America, that is no reason to give them jobs in high-security government entities with no questions asked.

The most maddening part of this story is that IT IS NOTHING NEW! There have been previous Somalian Minnesotans who have gone to fight for al-Shabab or who have tried to fight Jihad from Minnesota by raising money for the organization. There has even been a former airport employee who went to Somalia to fight and die for Jihad.

Speaking as a former TSA Officer, this author can verify that the frustration with airport politics is shared by many. Like all occupations, the Transportation Security Administration has employees who are both good and bad, but for the most part, these are diligent, patriotic Americans who work every day to avoid another 9/11. Yet when sensible concerns were brought to the attention of higher-ups, they were ignored.

It was this author’s experience that the best and brightest people working at the MSP airport were the men on the bomb squad. These men had real life experience with terrorism and bloodshed, and they understood all of the possible ways that our country could be attacked. When this author talked to them about these concerns, she was told, “You’re preaching to the choir, we try to tell them every day, but no one listens to us.”

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Rachel Weber received her Master's degree in Psychology with an emphasis on Forensics and Criminology. She has worked for multiple security and investigative agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, as well as the Hennepin County Sheriff's department and Hennepin County Juvenile Court. She trained at the Department of Public Safety in Evanston Illinois to become a Forensic Sketch Artist. She serves as an independent consultant on matters of security, surveillance, and investigation.